


The Puppy Incident

by wortmalerei



Category: VERIVERY (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Family Feels, Gen, there is lots of cuddling involved, verivery are a witch coven who adopt a familiar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26138176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wortmalerei/pseuds/wortmalerei
Summary: “What kind of self-respecting witch coven has a dog as a familiar?” Dongheon asks.“It’s the 21st century, hyung,” Gyehyeon jumps in with his reasonable tone, stroking an adoring finger down the puppy’s silky floppy ears. The puppy whuffs happily. “And Yongseung is allergic to cats.”(Or: Hoyoung brings home a puppy. Things do not go as expected.)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 89





	The Puppy Incident

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yeoubi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/yeoubi/gifts).



> For A, to make up for accidentally dragging her into this fandom. ...whoops?

It’s Hoyoung who brings home the puppy. 

Over the sound of Yeonho yelling in delight and scrambling over to scratch the puppy’s ears, Dongheon gives him a _look_. Hoyoung calmly stares back. “What? We need a familiar.”

Dongheon glowers back. “What kind of self-respecting witch coven has a _dog_ as a familiar?”

“It’s the 21st century, hyung,” Gyehyeon jumps in with his reasonable tone, stroking an adoring finger down the puppy’s silky floppy ears. The puppy whuffs happily. “And Yongseung is allergic to cats.”

Dongheon huffs. “We could just have gotten a--”

“Not this again, please!” Minchan says loudly, covering his ears. “We’ve been over that. Birds are _nasty_. They don’t think twice about pooping on your shoulder.”

“But they’re useful,” Dongheon protests. “They can carry messages and they don’t need to be walked.”

“Yes, because they just _poop on your shoulder_!” Minchan says even more loudly. 

The puppy whines in distress. 

All eyes swivel to the tiny bundle of fur still in Hoyoung’s arms, straining after Yeonho’s petting hands to bury its entire head in the soft sweater folds covering his arms. “Oooh,” Yeonho coos, bending down to nose at the soft puppy fur, “aren’t you just the cutest thing? Hmm? Hmm?”

Over the display of uninhibited cuddling going on right in front of his chest, Hoyoung gives Dongheon a pointed stare. Dongheon withstands it for three seconds before he caves. “Alright, alright. We’ll keep the puppy.”

Everyone knows better than to openly cheer at the victory, so they just exchange happy grins. Yongseung cheerfully hops up from his place on the couch, notepad brandished in his hands. “I’ve made a list of names.”

-

They name the puppy Kangmin. It’s the cutest little furball, with soft auburn fur, adorable floppy ears and big dark button eyes. It lumbers around their apartment, following them around, nosing at their feet and tugging at their pant legs until one of them gives in and bends down to shower it with cuddles and kisses. Even initially grouchy Dongheon rapidly develops a soft spot and ends up allowing the puppy to crawl into his bed more often than not.

Theoretically a familiar should be trained to help with their spells and potions, but they all tell themselves Kangmin is tiny yet. 

It’s around three months after Hoyoung first brought Kangmin to their home when it happens. Minchan is in the process of refining his patented nightmare relief potion and has stepped into their supply closet to fetch some sage when there’s a clatter, a yowl, and a loud bang. Rushing back into the kitchen, the first thing Minchan sees is the puddle of potion on the floor, the cauldron upended right next to it.

The others come running as well, piling into the room one by one with confused faces. “What happened?” Gyehyeon asks, peering over Youngseung’s shoulder.

“I don’t know,” Minchan says. “Something knocked over my potion.”

“Owww,” someone says from behind the kitchen counter. 

Dongheon yells in surprise at the unexpected voice. They all look around wildly, counting faces, but they’re all present and clearly _not_ behind the counter.

“Who’s there?” Hoyoung demands, threateningly raising the duster he must have been using before.

There’s a moment of tense silence, then something shuffles behind the counter. Slowly, a head of tousled auburn hair inches into view around the corner, followed by big, round eyes that blink rapidly at the scene on the other side of the kitchen. 

Hoyoung brandishes the duster. “Who are you?”

“Hyung?” the person behind the counter asks, voice small and confused. “Hurts.” A hand comes into view, pawing at the auburn hair. 

Minchan exchanges a confused glance with Youngseung, who looks just as lost as he feels. It’s Gyehyeon who is the first to move, brows scrunched in a puzzled frown as he takes a half-step forward. Yeonho grabs at him fearfully, hissing “Hyung! Don’t!”, but Gyehyeon absently brushes him off with a short pat. He takes another half-step. “... Kangminie?”

There’s a muffled choking noise from Dongheon, but the stranger behind the counter perks up immediately, eyes adoringly fixed on Gyehyeon. “Hyung! It hurts!” He sniffles, head lowering as if he’s curling in on himself. 

Minchan watches in disbelief, eyes flickering from the potion to the auburn-haired kid currently hiding behind their kitchen counter. “Oh my God… It’s really Kangminnie?” Dazedly, he takes a few steps forward until he can see the entire crouched figure, a stick-thin naked teenage kid with lanky arms curled around his knees, giving him a doleful look from big, watery eyes. 

“Chani-hyung,” the kid who is apparently their puppy familiar sniffles, and Minchan’s heart goes out to him. 

“Aigoo,” Minchan coos, dropping down to his knees in front of Kangmin to wrap him in a big hug. “Did you get hurt, Kangminie?”

With that, all hell breaks loose. Kangmin starts sobbing into Minchan’s t-shirt, Dongheon starts yelling about dangerous magic, Yeonho loudly exclaims over Gyehyeon’s genius, Hoyoung starts arguing with Dongheon about how to handle the situation, and Yongseung fetches a rag and gloves to start wiping up the potion. It takes a good few minutes for everyone to calm down enough to establish a bit of order. 

Yeonho is tasked to take Kangmin to his room to lend him a change of clothes while the rest clean up the kitchen, and by the time Kangmin is dressed, everyone has reconvened to the couch. Kangmin immediately clambers into the spot between Dongheon and Minchan, worming his stick limbs around until he clings to Dongheon’s side like a burr. With a sigh, Dongheon gives his head a gentle pat. “Alright. Who has ever heard of a magic that turns a dog into a person?” he asks.

They all shake their heads, even Yongseung, who is arguably the most well-read among them. “It shouldn’t be possible,” he says. “It goes against the laws of magic.”

“What about dark spells?” Hoyoung asks.

“Even those only produce poor results.”

Minchan rubs his chin. “It must have been my potion but I can’t imagine how it did that. It was just the nightmare relief potion, even if I changed it a bit and it was still unfinished.”

“Or what if it was a spell and then Kangmin just happened to run into the potion as a result of being hit?” Gyehyeon offers. 

“That wouldn’t be good,” Yeonho says unhappily. “That means there would have been another person in our place who broke in and escaped unnoticed.”

“It was a spell,” Kangmin pipes up. Their heads all swivel around to stare at him. “A long time ago.” He happily nuzzles Dongheon’s jaw, unfazed by their stares. 

“What?” Dongheon draws back in confusion, frowning. “What do you mean?”

“A spell flew at me, many years before now,” Kangmin says, before he buries his nose right back into Dongheon’s neck.

-

They’re at a loss. 

“How can it be?” Hoyoung asks three days later as they’re cleaning up after breakfast. It’s the same question all of them had been asking at different intervals all throughout the previous days without ever producing any satisfactory answers. “I’ve heard of delayed spells but that still leaves bending the laws of magic. It doesn’t make _sense_.”

Yongseung, who had been walking around with his nose in a book ever since, grimaces in frustration. “Maybe someone found a way to use the delay for increasing spell power?”

“But still,” Yeonho says, furiously wiping down the table, “enough power to bend the _laws_? If delaying a spell could increase its power that much, wouldn’t there be researchers who had discovered it by now?”

Gyehyeon, their spell expert, shakes his head. “Nothing in research suggests that. I even checked with my professor yesterday. Maybe it was an experiment gone wrong?”

Their discussions circle endlessly, never bringing any results. Meanwhile, Kangmin happily bounces around their home much like he had when he was a puppy. He loves to plaster himself bodily to whoever crosses his path, the closer the better. He is relentless in demanding cuddles and kisses, and stares at them sadly with his big puppy eyes if they don’t comply. 

One night, Minchan tries his luck at getting more information out of Kangmin. He sits down on the floor, Kangmin’s head in his lap, scratching fingers through Kangmin’s soft auburn hair. “Kangminie, you said the spell hit you a long time ago?”

“Yes,” Kangmin replies, eyes closed in satisfaction. 

“Did it hurt?”

“At first, but then not anymore.”

“Where were you when the spell hit you?”

Kangmin hums. “At home. With my family.”

“Your family?” Minchan exchanges a puzzled glance with Hoyoung. “Another human family, you mean?”

“Mmh, yes.”

Minchan combs down Kangmin’s fringe. “Do you remember who said the spell?”

“Mom.”

“Your _mom_?” Minchan is aghast. The others look just as lost and confused as they share an uncomfortable look. For all they can tell, the spell must have been highly experimental. Why would anyone do that to a harmless, adorable puppy? “Was she… not nice?” Minchan ventures carefully.

Kangmin shakes his head immediately. “No, she was very nice. She said, to protect.”

Minchan is stumped. What circumstances would require someone to turn their puppy into a person for protection? He looks around helplessly, but none of the others has an answer either.

-

“I don’t know,” Yeonho wails, slumped over their kitchen table at one-thirty in the morning. “Maybe there were puppy hunters?”

Gyehyeon, who has his feet propped up on Yeonho’s slumped back, snorts loudly. “Puppy hunters.”

“I have no clue, hyung, don’t be mean to me,” Yeonho whines in response. 

Gyehyeon uses one of his feet to pat his back consolingly. 

Yongseung looks down at the list of ideas they have compiled. It’s short and ridiculous, from puppy-targeting viruses to puppy-targeting wild animals and now to puppy-targeting humans. “I don’t think this is working.”

“Nothing about this makes sense,” Minchan complains. “If there was a danger and you wanted to use a spell to protect your puppy, why use a delayed one in the first place? And one that’s either super experimental or super illegal or both? There must have been better ways to protect him.”

Dongheon musingly taps his chin. “What would you do if you wanted to protect one of us, Gyehyeon?”

“Depends,” Gyehyeon says. “There’s amulets to protect against spells, and runes you can use to protect against physical harm. Spells that can make you invisible for a while, or lock doors so that no one but you can open them and such.”

Yongseung is ticking items off their list, then hesitates. “What about illnesses, hyung?”

Something about the tone of his voice makes Yeonho sit up. He catches Gyehyeon’s sliding feet and deposits them in his lap instead as he turns his expectant face to Gyehyeon alongside everyone else. Minchan leans forward in his seat.

“Well,” Gyehyeon says, “illnesses are a bit tricky. They’re usually not affected by protective spells or amulets or runes. Depending on the illness, you might prevent someone from being afflicted by putting a nature-changing spell on them, like the person did to Kangmin.”

Minchan furrows his brows. “Wait, so it’s a puppy-targeting virus after all?”

“No,” Dongheon says slowly, “but what if it was a human-targeting virus?”

“Oooooh,” Yeonho says, eyes wide. 

“Not a delayed spell,” Hoyoung breathes. 

“Wait,” Minchan says. “Wait a second. Are you saying that Kangmin is a _person_ who got turned into a _puppy_?”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Yongseung replies almost reverently, carefully circling the word “virus” on the notepad. 

“Sweet Circe,” Minchan says.

-

What they find out from further questioning of Kangmin is that he lived as a puppy for so long that he has difficulty remembering what exactly happened before he got turned into one. Time is a vague concept for him, and of his family he only has blurry memories that are more feelings and impressions than actual information. He doesn’t even remember what he was called before. He does remember his mom being very afraid, and he remembers lots of crying and even screaming, lots of confusion and sadness. One thing he is sure about, however, is that there is no need to go look for his mom. “She’s gone,” he says firmly, planting his head in Yeonho’s lap, and tugging at Yongseung’s sweater. 

“And your dad?” Gyehyeon asks gently.

“He’s gone too,” Kangmin replies, and that’s that. 

Chances of finding anybody would have been slim anyways with them neither knowing any names nor times nor places, and so they exchange unhappy looks, but decide to let Kangmin make the decision for himself. 

In the end, they just adopt Kangmin as a member of their coven and start training him after all, just not as a familiar. He becomes more articulate and confident over time, but against all of Dongheon’s prediction, what doesn’t change is how clingy he is. It’s not that much different to Kangmin the puppy, Minchan muses as he lies on the couch, Kangmin cuddling into his belly, just bigger and with sharper elbows. 

“You know what the problem is now?” Hoyoung asks from the floor where he’s cleansing some rose quartz. 

“What?” Minchan asks lazily, playfully plucking at Kangmin’s ear.

“We still don’t have a familiar.”

Minchan pauses his plucking to purse his lips. “... we’re not getting a bird.”


End file.
